"I'm The Miracle": The Story of Exoneree Derrick Jamison

From our friends at Resurrection After Exoneration:

“I’m number 119,” proclaims the man sitting beside my desk. His smile is broad and sincere, gold teeth glistening in the artificial light of the office. “Damon Thibodeaux is number 141, you know, the one who got out of Angola a couple weeks ago. Joe Ambrosia is number 140; we was together on death row in Ohio.” He seems so comfortable with these numbers, actually proud of them. Proud to be number 119!

If I were not aware of what he refers to, I might be shocked by his proud announcement, but it isn’t that way for us. Derrick Jamison is here to share his story with me, the story of how he landed on death row for a crime he did not commit, the story of a young man who spent over seventeen years fighting for his life as he awaited execution, and the story of a man who was finally exonerated, the 119th such person in the United States.

Derrick Jamison, from Cincinnati, Ohio, was twenty-four years old when he was convicted of aggravated murder and robbery on October 16, 1985. He was represented by a public defender in a case where the prosecutor and homicide detective withheld thirty-five pieces of evidence. They knew he was not guilty from the start, but getting the conviction was their goal. Apparently, it did not matter who their “victim” was!

Derrick entered death row at Southern Ohio Correctional Facility on October 25, the very day he was sentenced, and was placed into solitary confinement, behind bars, in a 6’x9’ cell, with no physical human contact for seventeen years. At times the prison would be locked down, and he would not be allowed visits or mail from anyone, even from his lawyer, for extended periods of time. For many years of his confinement, Derrick was allowed only two five-minute phone calls per year, one on Christmas Day.

While on death row, Derrick was granted six stays of execution. One was while he was in lockdown, so he did not even receive the notification. Another stay was granted on the actual scheduled date of his execution. He waited until the last minute, with crowds of protesters and supporters gathered outside the prison. When asked what he wanted for his last meal, he replied ,”A cake with a saw in it! I’m not thinking about no food. I’m thinking about dying.” Six times he went through various stages of this harrowing process, and six times it was halted by an official stay by the governor of Ohio.

For the first fourteen years, until 1999, Ohio had the death penalty as part of its system, and there were many inmates on death row awaiting execution, but the state did not use it. Since 1999, they have executed forty-seven inmates and exonerated six. These statistics do not include the even larger number of death row inmates whose sentences were reduced to life imprisonment during the past thirteen years. At one point, the governor, Richard Celeste, upon leaving office, reduced the sentences of all eight women on death row and of several men who were on their final appeals. One of the women whose sentence he reduced had been sentenced to at least eight death penalties for serial murders. Derrick says that he would not have accepted this condition had it been offered. He knew he was innocent and sought exoneration, not a reduced sentence.

At one point, Derrick was offered the opportunity to go free on time served, if he would admit guilt and stop his appeals. He refused. “People thought I lost my mind. I couldn’t admit to something I didn’t do. I’d rather die.”

“Death Row is the same as Schindler’s List,” Derrick continues. “You’re just watching your friends be murdered time and again.” Derrick watched healthy young men come in “like babies – 18 and 19 years old. I watched them grow into men and then they just killed ‘em. It’s like somebody pointing a gun at you and there ain’t nothin’ you can do. They had nobody to fight for them.” Ohio is second in the nation behind Texas in executions.

In 2002, John Byrd was executed. Another man came forward and admitted to the crime for which John had been convicted, but they still killed him. John and Derrick had become close friends on death row. “I curled up on my bunk watching TV, trying not to deal with it, but when they rolled John out on the gurney to his execution….” He paused and cleared his throat, attempting to regain his composure. “It still haunts me. A healthy young man, my buddy, but he was rebellious on the row.” Derrick, on the other hand, never had any write ups on death row. He was not a rebel. “If I had given in to anger and hostility, I would’ve lost my mind. I seen what it did to those other guys. I’m a miracle. All them men, all them babies were in there, some innocent like me, and I walked out. I’m the miracle.”

On May 23, 2002, Federal Judge Arthur Spiegel granted Derrick a new trial. He was moved to general population for three years while the justice system plodded along the path to his ultimate exoneration and release on October 25, 2005, exactly twenty years to the day from the day he first entered death row. His nephew came to pick him up, and the entire family was waiting for him when he got home…everyone except his two closest and most active supporters. “I didn’t die on death row, but my death penalty killed my parents.”

There were events of celebration for a month straight. It was a busy time, and it was good. “If I could bottle up that feeling and sell it, I’d be a millionaire!” He was enjoying life. “When I first came home, I went to the casinos. I won a lot of money; I lost a lot of money. That’s why they call it gambling. I had been a gambler before I went to prison.” There were parties, media events, and Derrick was in demand to speak at area events, “but my biggest supporters weren’t there. My mom was smiling from heaven.”

Asked about his current situation, Derrick reveals that he is on disability due to post traumatic stress disorder. “We ain’t been to jail; we been to hell and back,” he says. The disability compensation permits him to have a part-time job with limited pay, but he remains unemployed.

He spends a significant amount of time speaking to others, sharing his story. He remembers that he went to Catholic schools as a child and says that God gives him the power to go out and share his message with others. “When I speak to a large crowd, something comes over me. That’s God. God has made me into a teacher. I’m a teacher now.”

Derrick tells kids that he thinks that they are all at risk in today’s society. He urges them to remember him and others like him when they experience bad times. “We need to get rid of the death penalty,” he says. “What are we teaching our young people, when our government says it’s alright to kill?” He compares the death penalty to modernized lynchings, remembering what he learned in history class about families coming out with picnic baskets to watch the hangings in the town square. “That might have been a deterrent then, but this, what we have, doesn’t work!”

Our system will always make mistakes. “To err is human, right? We have to stop executing entirely so we won’t be killing innocent people on those mistakes.”

Derrick tells his audiences that he was never involved in drugs in his life, because he was always against them. “I seen what it did to people in my neighborhood.” He assures them that death row is populated by many different types of people. “A lot of guys on death row were pure evil and dangerous, but that doesn’t give somebody the right to kill them. Some were good guys that made mistakes.”

What does his future look like? “I’ll never heal; none of these guys will ever heal. We can’t be compensated for what’s been done to us. My life will get better, but I’ll never get over it. It will always be there…the nightmares. It’s something no human being should have to experience.”

Talking To My Son About Troy Davis, By Gina B. Womack

From Bridge the Gulf:
Friday, September 23, 2011

Tonight on my way home, I told my 13 year-old son that Troy Davis was put to death by the State of Georgia. He immediately broke into tears. I was taken aback by his reaction. We were just coming from his school football game where he had an awesome tackle and we should have been focusing and having a joyous discussion about that. But he asked me how my day went and when he was studying the constitution in school we had discussed Troy Davis and the right to a fair trial, so I thought I would let him know.

This is really a sad day for Troy Davis’s family, for all who are caught up in the INJUST justice system and for all children who are being taught about our constitution, especially children of color who need to learn that the constitution may work for some but not for everyone. As an African American male, he needs to know that not only is he 6 times more likely to be incarcerated than his white friends but also 3 times more likely to be executed.

This has left my son questioning how the United States would execute anyone, particularly someone who might be innocent like Troy Davis – From the mouth of babes. One might wonder how this could ever happen once, but it is a sad and awful truth that this occurs too many times. This isn’t something he will learn in his history class.

Reflecting on our criminal justice system as a whole, it’s really difficult to know how to move forward especially after Justice Scalia’s statement: "there is nothing unconstitutional about executing the innocent” and in comparing two very similar situations where a black man is executed and a white man is given clemency, as in the recent post I’ve seen about Troy Davis and Samuel Crowe. We have our work cut out for us. This is not a time to revert back to our everyday life, but a time to stand up and shout that this is wrong and we are not going to stand idly by and continue to watch this happen.

In our work in the juvenile justice system in Louisiana we see far too often the hands of evil working against our children and families. Far too often there is no accountability, from the Office of Juvenile Justice right up to the Governor’s office. When shown the evidence that children continue to be hurt and neglected by the hands that are supposed to care for them and help keep them from entering the adult system; or even worse, when shown the fate that has befallen Troy Davis, too many times those in power turn a blind eye.

What is being said here is that it is ok when our system makes mistakes, ignores the law, ignores the constitution, and takes longer than necessary to reform. Apparently, we can just lock children up for making mistakes, we can beat them, we can fail them, we can incarcerate them, we can push them into the adult system, and even kill them. 

Yes, we must keep up the movement, but it’s time that our movement includes action to get rid of those in power who continue to harm our communities! Our children are counting on us to keep them safe, and they are counting on America to include Justice for ALL!

Gina B. Womack is the executive director and co-founder of Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children (FFLIC), a statewide membership-based organization dedicated to creating a better life for all of Louisiana’s youth, especially those who are involved, or at risk of becoming involved in the juvenile justice system. Gina is the proud mother of three children, a member of Pleasant Zion Missionary Baptist Church and Sanctuary Choir as well the Joyful Gospel Choir. She is honored to be a 2006 Petra Foundation Fellow, 2009 Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana Advocate of the Year and 2009 Ms. Foundation Women of Vision award. Gina is also a 2011 Alston Bannerman National Fellow.

Louisiana Supreme Court Hears Arguments on Confederate Justice in Caddo Parish

(For more on this story, see the recent LJI post on the case).
From a press release issued today by the Louisiana Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty:

The Louisiana Supreme Court heard arguments today in the capital trial of State of Louisiana versus Felton Dorsey. Cecilia Trenticosta argued on behalf of Felton Dorsey. Anna Arceneaux, of Shreveport La., argued on behalf of the 26 Caddo Parish and other Louisiana Clergy Leaders, 28 Law and history scholars, the ACLU, the NAACP, the Louis A. Martinet Legal Society, the Equal Justice Initiative, the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute For Race And Justice, the Southern Center For Human Rights and Juror Carl Staples, that the presence of the Confederate Flag outside the Caddo Parish Courthouse had the invariable consequence of introducing race into the capital proceedings. The Louisiana Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (LCADP) traveled with Carl Staples to the Louisiana Supreme Court to hear the argument.

Mr. Staples, an African American man and long-time resident of Shreveport, was removed from the jury pool when he expressed outrage at being asked to decide on the life of another man with the Confederate Flag flying on the courthouse lawn: “You’re here for justice, and then again you overlook this great injustice by continuing to fly this flag which . . . put[s] salt in the wounds of . . . people of color.” In Mr. Dorsey’s case, the State used five of seven peremptory strikes to remove African-Americans jurors.

Sophie Cull, Director of LACDP, described the Confederate Flag outside the Caddo Parish Courthouse as “a symbol of the disenfranchisement of African-American jurors.” The question before the Louisiana Supreme Court, Cull notes, “is whether Louisiana will embrace a new day of full participation in the democratic process.”

This case is a powerful example of the widespread discrimination detailed in last year's Equal Justice Initiative Report.

The LCADP is concerned about the way race infects the administration of the death penalty in Caddo Parish, where the vast majority of death sentences are handed down by near all-white juries for the murder of white victims, even though 80% of murder victims in Caddo are African American.

Photo: Amici in this case and their supporters outside the court following arguments. Each are wearing badges stating "Subject to Removal for Cause." Excluded Juror Carl Staples is front and center.

Confederate Justice in Caddo Parish

It's been documented in numerous studies that justice in Louisiana is not colorblind. Caddo Parish, where Shreveport is located, has among the highest rates of death sentences in Louisiana, with seventeen men and one woman sentenced to death, fourteen of whom have been African-American men. One study found “a less than one-in-ten-thousand chance that the prosecuted cases were a racially random sample drawn from the homicide group.” Adding to the atmosphere of racial prejudice, these convictions have come in a courthouse with a confederate memorial - and confederate flag - placed at the entrance.
The monument, and the injustice perpetrated under its shadow, are powerfully described in a recent article by Cecelia Trenticosta:

A bust of a Confederate general is mounted at each corner. Stonewall Jackson stares to the north. Pierre Beauregard looks east. Henry Watkins Allen stands guard to the west. And Robert E. Lee watches south. Atop the monument stands a proud confederate soldier, holding a rifle. He is unnamed, presumably to represent everyman. Or, rather, every white man...

The flag itself is the Third National Flag of the Confederacy—the “blood-stained banner.” This flag was developed during the last throes of the Confederacy as a way to incorporate the battle flag (the St. Andrew’s Cross) with a red stripe running down the edge to symbolize the Confederates’ willingness to die for their cause. Shreveport—the last capital of the Confederate States—raises this flag in defiance of the fact that the war is over, and its cause lost.

This flag and monument, however, are not a part of a museum, or a freestanding monument apart from government property. Flanked by ancient live oaks, it stands as the only structure on the courthouse lawn at the Caddo Parish Courthouse. Every person summoned for jury duty, as well as every judge, clerk, employee, attorney, guard, police officer, and defendant must pass beneath the flag and monument.

Under this Confederate Flag, Caddo Parish administers Louisiana’s death penalty, its harsh felon-disenfranchisement laws, and its vast web of prosecutorial discretion under this flag.

Carl Staples, an African American native of Chicago who moved to Shreveport in the 1970s following the race riots and had been registered to vote in Shreveport for 30 years, was summoned for jury duty at the Caddo Parish Courthouse on May 14, 2009, in the capital case of Felton Dejuan Dorsey, a poor black man accused of killing a white firefighter in a majority-white area of Caddo Parish. Knowing that the courthouse flies a Confederate flag, he called the clerk’s office to state his objection to serving under the flag. The clerk told him that if he did not show up for jury duty, a warrant would be put out for his arrest. So he swallowed his pride and walked beneath the Confederate flag and past the monument to the Confederacy for jury selection. When called for individual examination, Staples stated:

[the flag] is a symbol of one of the most . . . heinous crimes ever committed to another member of the human race, and I just don’t see how you could say that, I mean, you’re here for justice, and then again you overlook this great injustice by continuing to fly this flag which . . put[s] salt in the wounds of . . . people of color. I don’t buy it.

The prosecutor promptly moved the court to strike Staples, arguing that he could not be fair. The judge granted the motion. The prosecutor then proceeded to strike five out of the remaining seven qualified black prospective jurors. The defense objected to the strikes as racially discriminatory in violation of the Supreme Court’s decision in Batson v. Kentucky. The trial judge rejected the challenge. Dorsey, a black man accused of killing a white victim, was convicted and sentenced to death by a jury of eleven whites and one black.

A recent appeal filed in Dorsey's case asks if justice can be administered fairly under the watchful eye of a symbol of white supremacy. The brief states that "Prominently displayed in front of the Caddo Parish courthouse, the Confederate flag represents for many people, and particularly for African-Americans, public entrenchment of racism in the parish’s judicial system and an endorsement of historical efforts to deny African-Americans equality under the law. The flag, as a public symbol of racial bias, poses an intolerable risk that capital punishment cannot be fairly administered within the courthouse walls."

It's clear that Dorsey's conviction was a case of Confederate justice. Will the Louisiana Supreme Court recognize this?

Wrongfully Convicted Urge Action in Wake of Supreme Court Decision Expanding Immunity for Prosecutors

From our friends at Innocence Project New Orleans:
After Tuesday's decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Thompson v. Connick granting prosecutors' even greater immunity for their misconduct, the Innocence Network released a letter signed by 19 innocent people who were wrongfully convicted in part because of the bad acts of prosecutors demanding greater accountability for prosecutorial misconduct. The letter, which was addressed to Attorney General Eric Holder and the Presidents of the National District Attorney's Association and the National Associations of Attorneys Generals, demands to know what systems they intend to put in place to ensure that innocent people don't fall victim to overzealous prosecutors.

In its 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that the Thompson did not meet the burden of proving that the New Orleans District Attorney's office was deliberately indifferent in failing to turn over information pointing to Thompson's innocence and the need for training and supervision to safeguard those rights. The Court reasoned that because prosecutors are required to attend law school and/or pass the bar exam and are required to meet certain professional standards, "recurring constitutional violations are not the 'obvious consequence' of failing to provide prosecutors with formal inhouse training about how to obey the law."

"Basically what the Court is saying is that because they are lawyers, there was no reason for the District Attorney to believe that his prosecutors might need training to be sure they are fulfilling their constitutional obligations to disclose information that might be useful to their defense," said Keith Findley, President of the Innocence Network. "This logic completely ignores the reality of what happened to John Thompson who was sentenced to death by prosecutors who repeatedly failed in their obligation to disclose exculpatory information. No other profession is shielded from this complete lack of accountability."

The dissent by Justice Ginsberg notes, ". . . the Brady violations in Thompson's prosecutions were not singular and they were not aberrational. They were just what one would expect given the attitude toward Brady pervasive in the District Attorney's Office. Thompson demonstrated that no fewer than five prosecutors - the four trial prosecutors and Riehlmann - disregarded his Brady rights. He established that they kept from him, year upon year, evidence vital to his defense. Their conduct, he showed with equal force, was a foreseeable consequence of lax training in, and absence of monitoring of, a legal requirement fundamental to a fair trial.

"Prosecutors posses enormous power over our all over our lives, yet today the Supreme Court took away one of the few remaining vehicles that we have for holding them accountable for their actions. It is virtually impossible for the wrongfully convicted to meet the standard endorsed by the Court today," said Kathleen Ridolfi of the Northern California Innocence Project. "If prosecutors don't quickly enact systems to stem misconduct, we are sure to see an increase in innocent people's lives being destroyed by prosecutors who too often put securing convictions above their obligations to seek the truth."

In recent Supreme Court cases dealing with the issue of prosecutorial misconduct, the National District Attorneys Association, the National Association of Assistant United States Attorney's Attorney Generals and the Solicitor General have filed friend-of-the-court briefs arguing that there are already plenty of systems in place to cure the problems of misconduct, including internal disciplinary systems, state bar disciplinary systems, monitoring by the courts, and in extreme cases, criminal prosecution.

Yet, as the letter released on Tuesday notes, prosecutors are rarely disciplined for their misdeeds. The letter sites a recent landmark report by the Northern California Innocence Project, Preventable Error: A Report on Prosecutorial Misconduct in California 1997-2009, that found prosecutors were guilty of misconduct in California 707 times from 1997 to 2009, yet were disciplined only 7 times. The letter also points to a USA Today investigation by Brad Heath and Kevin McCoy that was published on Sept. 23, 2010, that documented 201 instances where federal prosecutors violated laws or ethics rules since 1997, yet only one of those prosecutors was suspended from practicing law - and that was only for one year.

"Misconduct was found in the cases of all the innocent people who signed onto this letter, yet none of the prosecutors involved were disciplined in any way," said Barry Scheck, Co-director of the Innocence Project. "How many lives are going to be destroyed before we realize that prosecutors are no different than any other professionals? There are good ones and there are bad ones, and we need systems in place to stop the bad ones."

"Our condolences go out to John Thompson and his family, who endured his nightmare with him. He spent 18 years in prison -- 14 on death row -- because of the bad acts of prosecutors," said Emily Maw, Executive Director of the Innocence Project of New Orleans. "While nothing could bring back the years he lost to this misconduct, a jury and an appellate court felt he should at least be compensated for his wrong. But the Supreme Court in a poorly reasoned decision, that failed to recognize the reality of the New Orleans prosecutors office in 1984, has stripped him of that compensation today."

A copy of the letter, which was also sent to the district attorney offices in the counties where the signors were originally prosecuted, is available at this link .

In Louisiana, Odds of a Death Sentence 97% Higher If Victim is White

Reprinted from the Federal Criminal Defense Investigator blog:

A recent study conducted by Professors Glenn Pierce and Michael Radelet published in the Lousiana Law Review showed that the odds of a death sentence in parts of Louisiana were 2.6 times higher for those charged with killing a white victim than for those charged with killing a black victim. The study examined 191 homicides in East Baton Rouge Parish between 1990 and 2008 involving a charge of first-degree murder.

Even after considering other variables such as the number of aggravating circumstances, the number of concurrent felonies and the number of homicide victims, the odds of a death sentence were 97% higher for those whose victim was white than for those whose victim was black.

The authors of the study suggested that one reason why the victim’s race was an important factor was because “prosecutors’ offices, jurors, judges, investigating police officers, and others involved in constructing a death penalty case are (consciously or unconsciously) not as outraged or energized, on average, when a black is murdered as when a white is murdered.”

The authors said “death penalty cases are expensive, and choices need to be made on how often the death penalty can be sought and in which cases”and that “the social status of the victim and the family of the victim, including his or her race, increases [a case's] importance.”

Resurrection After Exoneration Hosts Fundraiser This Weekend

Resurrection After Exoneration (RAE) is a New Orleans organization dedicated to serving innocent men who were once wrongfully imprisoned.

From their website:

Each year, we hear about more innocent people being released from prison in the United States. Today, there are over 400 exonerated men and women who have been wrongly convicted and victimized by our criminal justice system. On average, each has served more than 10 years in prison before being released. RAE was founded in 2007 by exonerees to promote and sustain a network of support among formerly wrongfully incarcerated individuals in the South. RAE works to reconnect exonerees to their communities and provide access to those opportunities of which they were robbed.

RAE was founded in 2006 by John Thompson, an exoneree who spent 18 years in prison – 14 on death row – for a crime he didn’t commit. RAE now provides exonerees with case management, social services and education, and the opportunity for exonerees to share their stories with the world.

RAE is hosting their first ever fundraiser on June 19 - Juneteenth - from 5:00pm - 7:00pm. As an organization dedicated to helping emancipate modern-day prisoners and captives–those wrongfully incarcerated in the Louisiana state penitentiary–RAE is dedicating this event to celebrating freedom in every form, while commemorating the long road ahead to providing true freedom to all.

The fundraiser will be at the Angela King Gallery, at 241 Royal Street in the French Quarter. It will feature music by the Leroy Jones Jazz Trio, art and a silent auction, hors d'oeuvres from area restaurants, and will be hosted by special guest Jed Horne, the Pulitzer-winning author of Breach of Faith and Desire Street.

Above: John Thompson holds picture of Jim Williams, the man who sent him to death row. Williams is posing with model electric chair he had made.
Photo by Frank Aymami.

African American Mississippi Man Starts Record Sixth Murder Trial

By Bill Quigley, Audrey Stewart and Davida Finger

An African American man, Curtis Flowers, made history this week when he became the first person in U.S. history to ever go on trial for murder six times for the same crime. Mr. Flowers has been in jail in Mississippi since 1996, accused of the murder of four people at a furniture store. Jury selection started this week in tiny Winona Mississippi, population 5,482.

Mr. Flowers has been in jail since 1996 awaiting trial and was previously tried for these murders in 1997, 1999, 2004, 2007 and 2008. All either ended in hung juries or overturned convictions. The five previous trials have already cost the State of Mississippi over $300,000.

Winona, known as the “Crossroads of Mississippi,” is a small town in a small poor rural county 120 miles south of Memphis and about 100 miles north of Jackson Mississippi. Winona is in Montgomery County. The total population of the county is just over 12,000. The county is 45 percent African American. The median home value in Winona is $51,000.

A 1997 conviction of Mr. Flowers was reversed by the Mississippi Supreme Court because the prosecution improperly used theatrics and irrelevant evidence of other crimes to inflame and prejudice the jury. A 1999 conviction was reversed because the prosecution used hearsay evidence and twisted the facts before the jury.

A 2004 conviction was reversed after the prosecutor exercised all fifteen of his peremptory strikes on African Americans. The Mississippi Supreme Court said that trial “presents us with as strong a prima facie case of racial discrimination as we have ever seen…”

The fourth and fifth trials ended in mistrials when the juries were not able to reach a unanimous verdict.

In the 2007 trial, five African American jurors voted to acquit and the seven white jurors voted to convict. In the 2008 trial, a retired African American teacher held out for acquittal. The prosecutor later charged that juror with perjury, only to drop the charge.

On Monday, because the trial is in such a small county, nearly all the prospective jurors had some relationship to the case through family, school or work. Four white prospective jurors were law enforcement officers and admitted they had guarded or transported Mr. Flowers - but they said they could consider the case impartially. Prospective African American jurors spoke about their association with the Flower’s family through work, family, church, and a popular gospel group headed by Curtis’ father Archie Flowers. One juror spoke of his moving experiences with Curtis Flowers after meeting him through his church group’s prison ministry.

On Tuesday, Lajuanda Williams, an African American law student from the Mississippi College of Law, was followed and then stopped by Montgomery County law enforcement as she drove to Mr. Flowers’ trial.

Ms. Williams drove from Jackson Mississippi to Winona to start her first day observing the murder trial. She is spending the summer as an intern in the Mississippi Office for Capital Defense. As she was approaching Winona, a Montgomery County police car followed her for about a mile then turned on his lights and pulled her over.

When she rolled down her window, the officer instructed Ms. Williams to place her hands on the steering wheel and not look at him, look directly ahead. She complied. She knew she had not been speeding and had broken no laws.

He asked Ms. Williams where she was going. She asked him, “Have I broken any laws?” He responded, that’s not the question I asked you. What I asked is where are you going? Ms. Williams said “There should be some reason why you pulled me over.” The deputy said, I’m going to ask you again. Where are you going? She told him, “I’m going to the courthouse.” He then asked her, what is your business in Winona? She told him, “It is not any of your business why I am here in Winona.” He said, if that’s where you’re going, you need to drive straight to the courthouse and stay out of trouble.

The police car then followed Ms. Williams for about 500 feet and then turned off.

During the entire exchange, Ms. Williams recalled many stories from African Americans in her home state of Mississippi who had been tasered and injured by officers during stops just as this. She fully complied with deputy’s order to look directly ahead. The deputy never gave her any reason for the stop. She was not asked for her license. She was not warned. She was not ticketed. Unfortunately, because she was ordered to look straight ahead, Ms. Williams was not able to identify the deputy.

Ms. Williams then drove to the courthouse to begin the first day of her internship. She was angry but not surprised. “I know the reality of being African American in a place like Winona,” she said. Two white interns, second year law students at the University of San Francisco, were not stopped when they drove into Winona on Wednesday.

In court on Wednesday, defense counsel sought to bring up the incident with law enforcement to the attention of the judge. The prosecutor angrily objected. Defense counsel asked permission to put Ms. Williams on the stand. The Judge said “We’re entering the theater of the absurd here” and that he was not interested in hearing about what happened to Ms. Williams. He said that he could not control everything and the stop, if it occurred, which he did not believe, didn’t have anything to do with the case. He ordered the jury questioning to continue and refused to take any evidence of the stop of Ms. Williams.

Ms. Williams told Alan Bean of Friends of Justice why she thought she was stopped. “I think it came from the trial and the injustice that has been permeating this town for years. You can cut the tension in Winona with a knife.” Why bring it up and risk the anger of the judge and prosecutor? “I could not sleep last night,” she explained, “I kept thinking about my daughter, she’s three years old. I kept thinking I had to do something so that she doesn’t have to go through what I just went through.”

While jury selection continues, the U.S. Department of Justice has been asked to investigate the Mississippi law enforcement harassment of Ms. Williams.

Despite all this, when asked how Curtis Flowers was holding up during the trial, his mother Lola Flowers replied “Well, he’s got the faith.”

For the criminal justice system in Winona Mississippi, as in many other places, William Faulkner said it best. Faulkner, Mississippi native, author, and Nobel Prize winner, wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

For more information and updates on the case of Curtis Flowers, see http://friendsofjustice.wordpress.com.

Bill is Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Audrey Stewart is a Mississippi native and a public school teacher in New Orleans. Davida Finger and Bill are professors at Loyola University New Orleans. You can reach Bill at quigley77@gmail.com.

Justice Denied is Justice Denied: Please Support Curtis Flowers

By Audrey Stewart and Davida Finger, Esq.

Curtis Flowers has been incarcerated in Mississippi for almost 15 years without ever being fairly convicted of any crime. Facing capital charges, his sixth trial for the same alleged crimes began today in Winona, MS. Curtis Flowers sat peacefully as jury selection began in the quadruple murder case against him. Family members of some of the victims held detailed, printed information about the prospective jurors including jurors’ employment, family and residential information, criminal backgrounds, facebook postings, and comments such as “justice court says good.”

Curtis Flowers has been tried on the same related murders charges in: 1997, 1999, 2004, 2007, and 2008. Witnesses eventually came forward only after a $30,000 award was offered by the prosecutor’s office. The Mississippi State Supreme Court overturned the first two decisions against Mr. Flowers due to prosecutorial misconduct and errors. After the second trial, the court opined, “. . . the prosecution went far beyond the realm of admissible evidence in this case in order to improperly enhance the likelihood of Flowers for [sic] capital murder . . . ." (State v. Flowers, Ms. S. Ct. (April 3, 2003), at 49).

Following the third trial, the high court vacated the decision to convict and the death sentence based on the prosecutor’s evident racial bias in using all fifteen jury strikes to eliminate only African Americans from the jury pool; only one African American ultimately sat on the jury that voted to convict. “The continuous striking of African-American jurors, whose views on the death penalty are virtually indistinguishable from those of similarly situated white jurors who went unchallenged by the State, does raise an inference of racial discrimination.” (State v. Flowers, 947 So. 2d 910, 921, 2007).

The fourth trial resulted in a hung jury; five African American jurors voted to acquit while seven White jurors voted to convict. According to the Clarion-Ledger, those first four trials cost the State of Mississippi no small sum: approximately $283,000. (See Jimmy Gates, Jurors Give Up; Fifth Trial Awaits, Clarion Ledger, Dec. 6, 2007).

The fifth trial also resulted in a hung jury. Following that trial, the prosecutor charged the only juror who held out for an acquittal with perjury: a retired, African American teacher. However, following both the judge and prosecutor’s recusals from that case, the Mississippi Attorney General’s office dropped the perjury charges due simply to the lack of evidence. The cost of the fifth trial brought the total state spending on its case against Mr. Flowers to over $300,000. (See Charlie Smith, Flowers Defense Attacks Photo Line-up, Greenwood Commonwealth, June 2, 2010).

Nearly of the prospective jurors had some relationship to the case through family relationship, school or work. Four white prospective jurors were law enforcement officers who testified that they had guarded or transported Flowers but felt prepared to consider the case impartially. One after another, prospective African American jurors spoke about their association with the Flower’s family through work, family, church, and a popular gospel group headed by Archie Flowers (Curtis’s father). One juror spoke of his moving experiences with Curtis Flowers after meeting him through his church group’s prison ministry. Asked how Flowers was holding up at the end of the first day, his mother Lola Flowers replied “Well, he’s got the faith.”

For more information:

Mississippi Supreme Court Decisions, at: http://www.mssc.state.ms.us/appellate_courts/sc/scdecisions.html.

Friends of Justice (Curtis Flowers link).

Audrey Stewart is a community activist as soon to be teacher. She is originally from the Mississippi Delta and lives in New Orleans.

Davida Finger is an attorney and Assistant Professor of Law at Loyola Law School. She teaches the Community Justice Clinic and the Law & Poverty course. In collaboration with community organizations, Professor Finger has worked extensively on disaster-related cases and policy matters to improve government accountability in rebuilding and on distribution of disaster funds. Prior to joining the clinical faculty at Loyola, she practiced law in Seattle focusing on consumer, land use, and human rights cases.